Fabián Mauricio Martínez discovered his love for travel through his other passion — literature. So when he first read Jack Kerouac’s novel, “On the Road”, he dreamed of crossing the United States from coast to coast as the main characters in the book had. One day, he decided it was time to make the trip his own.

Martina: When it came time to actually leave on adventures of his own, he wouldn’t go anywhere without his good luck charm — a photo one of his friends gave him of a landscape in Tibet. On the back, she wrote: “Never stop traveling, even when you’re in your own living room.”

Fabián: Representa la importancia de los viajes en mi vida.

Martina: But this message wouldn’t take on its full meaning, until Fabián found himself on a train, crossing the United States from coast to coast.

Martina: Welcome to the Duolingo Spanish Podcast, where we bring you true bilingual stories of travels with unexpected turns, plans unraveled, and destinations unknown. The Spanish in this story is for intermediate level learners, but if you get lost, don’t worry, we’ll be chiming in throughout the story.

Martina: When he was a kid, Fabián would fantasize about different places around the world. He would spend hours looking through his atlas, dreaming about the Amazon River, the Serengeti plains or the glaciers in Greenland.

Martina: That’s how he embarked on various trips, without ever leaving home. He sailed with Santiago from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”, and walked barefoot beneath the stars next to Lena Grove, of William Faulkner’s “Light in August.”

Martina: In this book from the fifties, Kerouac tells the story of two young men as they go on their first trip across the United States. They travel on foot, by bus, and by car, searching for the wild heart of North America. And as they travel, they get to know themselves, too.

Martina: Since he was fascinated with Kerouac’s book, Fabian decided to go to all the places he had read about in On the Road. He lived in Bucaramanga, a town at the foot of the Andes in northeast Colombia. From there, he flew to Truckee, California. In Truckee, he took a summer job as a cooking assistant to save up money for the trip.

Martina: A train from San Francisco to New York takes about three and a half days and goes right through the middle of the country. As the train pulled away from the station, Fabián thought about Sal Paradise, one of the characters from Kerouac’s book. During his trip, Sal got to know itinerant workers, jazz musicians and Mexican fruitpickers.

Martina: But even though the other passengers ignored him, Fabián was thrilled to be riding with them. The train howled loudly, breaking the silence of a quiet day. He couldn’t wait to meet someone who resembled the characters in Kerouac’s book. Fabián got his first chance when a man asked him if he could charge his laptop by his seat, because the outlet closest to him didn’t work.

Martina: Meanwhile, Fabián read a passage from On the Road, in which Sal Paradise rides with a group of homeless men who traveled for free on the freight cars. But as he looked around, Fabián only saw regular passenger cars.

Martina: Next to him, a blonde woman was eating an ice cream and looking out the window. That’s when Fabián was reminded of another character from On the Road: Dean Moriarty. He would fall in love with the women he met on his travels.

Martina: Without looking at him, she said she didn’t find the train ride special at all, and continued eating her ice cream. Rejected, Fabián turned his attention to his next meal. Dinner was being served in another train car, and the smell of roast beef and french fries made him hungry. Fabián went back to his seat.

Martina: One of the senior citizens sat near him, but when Fabián tried to speak to him, he turned away, seemingly annoyed. The man proceeded to talk to himself, gesturing wildly with his hands. Eventually, he fell asleep.

Martina: On the pages of that diary, he wrote: I carry with me my notebook, my camera, and the book my ex girlfriend gave me, the book which is to blame for this journey, On the Road. One thing is to read it under the sheets in the privacy of my own bed, a very different thing is to read it on the road, as if each paragraph were to show you that your place in the world is everywhere and also nowhere.

Martina: Good luck with that, the guy said and left. The romantic journey Fabián had played out so many times in his mind, was not turning out at all like he had imagined. There were no eloquent conversations about the American way, no memorable encounters or quirky characters. The quirkiest thing about this whole trip was Fabián! So Fabián abandoned the other passengers, and found refuge in his journal. In it, he wrote about the fields of corn, the farms and lakes that he saw fly by through his window:

Martina: As he left the train, Fabián opened his copy of On the Road and took out the photo his friend had given him so long ago. He thought again about the message on the back, the one that encouraged him to never stop traveling, even when he was in his own living room. Home was now more than two-thousand miles away, in Bucaramanga, Colombia. He was tired and hungry, and a living room with a couch sounded pretty good right about then.